Mapping the Future: Endgame, Premediation, and the War on Terror

Author: Kincaid Andrew  

Publisher: Rodopi

ISSN: 0927-3131

Source: Samuel Beckett Today/Aujourd'hui, Vol.25, Iss.1, 2013-12, pp. : 169-182

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Abstract

"Operation Endgame" is the name of the 2003-2012 plan implemented by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to detail and deport all removable aliens and "suspected terrorists." Evocatively, this strategy of "detaining an alien population" bears the same name as Beckett's 1957 play. If performing, enacting and gaining an audience reaction to imprisonment, waiting, uncertainty and loss are at the core of each discourse, each Endgame – theatre and state agency – then in what ways might we say that the earlier play predicts and prophesies our current War on Terror?